Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia acknowledges the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live.

First Nations People have been telling stories on this country for many thousands of years, and we acknowledge their incredible contribution to the cultural and environmental landscape we reside in.

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2025 PIGGY-BACK-DRAFT Commission Recipient

Written by Black Swan State Theatre Company 16 December 2025 4 min
Black Swan are excited to announce writer Donna Hughes as the recipient of the 2025 Piggy-Back-Draft Commission with her proposed play Containment.

With thanks to the generous support of the Malcolm Roberston Foundation, we have now awarded our third PIGGY-BACK-DRAFT Commission, which is designed to provide an opportunity for a WA writer to take the next step in their writing career.

Donna is an award-winning playwright based in Walyalup (Fremantle). Her writing has been recognised around Australia and internationally. Donna’s play, Trackers, won an Australian Writers Guild award (AWGIE) in 2021 and she was the recipient of the Martin Lysicrates Prize 2022. Donna’s short film Isolation in Lockdown was nominated by the New York Independent Cinema Awards and nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Writing by the WA Screen Culture Awards 2022. Her play The Next Stop won the Best Writer Award at the Short + Sweet Festival, Hollywood.

For the Piggy-Back-Draft commission, Donna is writing Containment – a workplace thriller that takes a 360-degree look at the education system, from the corporatisation of schools to teacher shortages and shifting societal attitudes toward education. When an irate father storms an elite school, four teachers are ordered to lock themselves in an office to wait it out. Containment promises to pack a punch and ignite debate about how we educate the next generation.

Donna says “I’m honoured to be selected for this commission. It’s a rare opportunity to develop new work with the support of Black Swan State Theatre Company. My sincere thanks to the Malcolm Robertson Foundation for their continued investment in Australian writing, and to Kate Champion, Chris Isaacs and the Black Swan team for backing this project.”

Donna’s pitch was selected from a process of written submissions, narrowed to a shortlist of three who were each interviewed by Artistic Director Kate Champion. The initial selection panel consisted of Black Swan Associate Artistic Director Naomi Pigram Mitchell and sector director/writer/performer Humphrey Bower.

Artistic Director Kate Champion says “Thanks to the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, we are thrilled to commission another WA playwright, Donna Hughes, to develop Containment – a timely play which will delve into the culture of fear being created within our education system through present day pressures to maintain economic viability.”

Over the next eighteen months Donna will be supported by Black Swan to deliver a full length play for programming consideration.

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